Navigating Family Dynamics While Protecting Donor Intent

The legendary businessman and philanthropist Ed Snider was a titan of Philadelphia sports. He was inducted in the Hockey Hall of Fame, owned Philadelphia’s NBA team, the 76ers, and even ran the Philadelphia Eagles NFL team back in the 1960s. But Ed’s philanthropic legacy is just as illustrious. He helped found the Ayn Rand Institute, created the Ed Snider Center for Enterprise and Markets at his alma mater the University of Maryland, and established a charitable family foundation to involve his six children in his philanthropic endeavors.

Ed’s son Craig joins Peter on this episode of Giving Ventures to discuss his father’s giving, the importance of donor intent, and the complexities that come with charitable giving in a large family. Craig served as executive director of the Snider Family Foundation.

Note: This transcript was generated and cleaned by AI.

Peter Lipsett: I only had a few interactions with the great philanthropist and business leader Ed Snider, and my impression from those few interactions was that this was a guy who was tough. He knew what he wanted. He had big, bold visions about things, and he went after them. And that energy, that vision, is what helped him get the hockey expansion team, the Flyers, into Philadelphia in the 1960s, to buy the basketball team, the 76ers, out of bankruptcy and build that franchise back up, but also to lead companies in the music industry, to become a titan of sports ownership, but also sports facilities and sports media. Maybe most famously of all, he was also exceptionally generous. He loved this country with a passion, and that is a legacy that we always want to continue. But how do you protect that legacy? How do you make sure the donor intent is in place for a generous business leader and donor like that in their lifetime? And then after they pass away, as Ed Snider has. That was a job that fell to Ed’s kids, and we are happy to have one of those kids with us today to talk about these thorny problems.

Craig Snider became the founding executive director of the Snider Family Foundation when it was being formed and worked hard with his dad to craft the donor intent and the purpose of that foundation. Outside of the philanthropic work, Craig is also just an impressive guy in his own right, who has had careers in executive leadership, marketing innovation, the entertainment industry, some entrepreneurship, the sports industry, all kinds of neat stuff. And today, with Craig, we are going to explore how you define a family’s donor intent and then how you carry it out with a large family, the experiments that worked, the ones that didn’t work, and how he continues to carry on his dad’s legacy and build his own as we go. Craig, it’s great to see you.

Craig Snider: Thank you, Peter. Nice to be on. I appreciate the opportunity to share with you today.

Peter Lipsett: Your dad was a real builder, a true entrepreneur. Just curious, having grown up with him, grown up around these sports franchises and all this neat stuff, what were the big lessons you took away from him?

Craig Snider: Well, my dad really was a pretty simple guy. I think that might be true of a lot of very successful entrepreneurs. They don’t have ambition that extends in every direction for all time. They start out in one place and do what they’re doing, and then once they’ve mastered that, they build on it. He was classically that kind of entrepreneur. He grew up in a family of recent immigrants. My grandfather was a first-generation American. My great-grandfather was born in Russia. So we came as a part of the great Jewish migration to the United States when the pogroms in Russia were taking place and Jews had to get out.

It’s kind of interesting, because my great-grandfather was a peddler. He sold fruit from a pushcart, and then the next generation had corner stores, and later in their lives those corner stores consolidated and became analogous to what we might think of today as a typical grocery store or supermarket. So it was that progression. You see it today with a lot of immigrants, where the Koreans come in and start selling fruit on the street corner, and they get it. So it was like that. My dad grew up in that environment. He worked in the grocery store, and he took great pride in how he stacked the vegetables and the fruits. He felt like he had the best fruit department in Washington, DC. And then he started selling Christmas trees at Christmas and flowers for the different holidays. Oftentimes they would do that. His first venture was that he found he could sell records, the 45s back in the day. His first real business that he started was a record business. He started selling them in the grocery stores, in those racks. You walk into a drugstore and you see the rack of greeting cards; that’s a rack supplied by an outside supplier. They take care of it. Well, he did the same thing with records, and that’s how he got his start.

But a very simple guy. And every time he expanded into a business, he was always expanding laterally, or somewhere connected to the business he was in, like when he got into the sports stuff. I guess my lesson from him was just be good at what you’re doing, whatever you’re doing, and that money wasn’t necessarily the goal. The goal was to be really good at something and to really love what you were doing. And money was the reward because you did it well.

Peter Lipsett: I just finished reading Jim Collins’s new book about, essentially, how to live a good life. One of the things he points to, as he goes through all these different stories, is that all of these famous people, these people who’ve done huge, amazing things, all inverted the money arrow. Many of them ended up being very wealthy and, certainly, economically stable, but money was never the driver. It was that fire inside of them. They found the thing that really got them going. And that’s what you’re saying: he knew what got him going, and he knew what he was good at, and he pursued it to the very end, which I think is just incredible. So how did that…

Craig Snider: Yeah, it’s like a passion for excellence.

Peter Lipsett: Yeah, that passion for excellence. How did that manifest in philanthropy? Was philanthropy a piece of his life throughout, or was it one of those things that came about later in life?

Craig Snider: Well, he’s always been very generous. You hear these stories about Donald Trump, how he’d hear about somebody who was on hard times and he would help them out. My dad helped out the people around him, his family, friends. And he had a foundation or a nonprofit for a long time before I helped him to structure it and really organize it for the future, back around 2010. I did that in that time frame. He would probably tell you that before that, his philanthropy was very undisciplined. If somebody came to him and pitched him and cornered him, sometimes he would just give because he thought it was a good idea and he liked the people, but there was no structure behind the due diligence. He probably made a few gifts that he wished he hadn’t.

That being said, once we organized for him back in 2010, ’11, ’12, he was really funny, because everyone had a discretionary account when the board finally came on. They had a certain amount of money that they could allocate on their own, as long as it wasn’t averse to donor intent, as long as it wasn’t restricted. And he had a certain amount more than everybody else, but he would call me from time to time and say, “Craig, how much money do I have in my account?” And he loved the idea that there was this organizational discipline put on it, and on him.

I just found that so incredible. Once he set up the organization, he didn’t say to himself, “Well, I’m going to give whatever I want to. It doesn’t really matter.” He didn’t. He could have spent whatever he wanted on whoever he wanted, and he had the authority. He had veto power while he was alive to veto anything that he didn’t like, even if it came up through committee. But once we had the structure in place, he took it seriously, even to the point of his own discretionary budget. He would call me and say, “Where am I at? Do I have enough to do something here?” So he had a lot of respect for the organization, not just our foundation, but you see this throughout his career. He hired good people. He delegated to them, and he let them run the business. Now, I would say I didn’t work with the Flyers, and I didn’t see some of the big controversies and trades that happened with management and players over the years. That was really his baby. But generally speaking, corporately and with the foundation, he would let the staff and the family do what they were doing.

We developed, I think, a very professional governance model and grant-making model very quickly. I was actually shocked that we were a little bit further ahead than many well-established and much bigger foundations than us, because until my dad died, the foundation didn’t really have a corpus. We would fund it on an annual budgetary basis. But he was very proud of that.

Peter Lipsett: So let’s go back to the beginning of that structure and building those structures. You were there, helping him put these structures in place, and it sounds like he was amenable to it. Not all philanthropists are seeking that structure; they feel constrained by it. But it sounds like he accepted it. Take us inside some of those early discussions, not just of the structure, but how you define what the donor intent is, the purpose of the whole foundation.

Craig Snider: Well, that’s interesting, because there was no real structure before I came and he asked me to do it. I had to look back through years of gifts that he had given. You have to keep in mind that all that really was was one of his top guys coming to him with letters, unsolicited, from the Boys Club of America and this place and that place. The thousand dollars that he gave was kind of a no. But I went back through it and looked at it, and I probably had to get 990s and just go back through it. What I determined was that there were three major areas that he gave to. One was community: the hospitals, the cancer research, whatever. There was American values, like the David Horowitz Freedom Center. My dad was an early supporter of the Middle East Forum, these kinds of places that were safeguarding America’s security and culture, fighting for it. And then the third was Jewish culture and survival. He didn’t really believe in funding Israel directly. He felt that Israel could take care of itself, that they had developed enough and they had enough. And I tend to agree with that. However, in emergencies, we would be there. Like when the Second Intifada happened and there were all of these attacks, their emergency services needed ambulances and such, and he bought an ambulance. That was something that I saw.

Once we figured out what areas he had been spending in, I had a framework. But by far the biggest area would have been American values and free enterprise. To me, that was really what he cared about. At the time, I had become aware of the Bradley Foundation, and I was very interested, obsessed really, with the whole idea of how the American educational system had been completely penetrated and overtaken by the left. We were looking at ways to help the situation in higher education. I went to Bradley and learned about what they were doing, but I also had a chance to look at their mission statement. They publish an annual report every year, and they were very clear about what they’re giving to and why they’re giving. They always seemed to be one step ahead of the pack in terms of anticipating how we could leverage higher ed. After looking at their mission statement, I felt very confident that we could draft something for our foundation that borrowed a little bit of their terminology and some of their ideas, and that’s what we did.

Peter Lipsett: So you had that sketched out. You had that on paper. You also have five other brothers and sisters, is that right? So it’s a big family. How did you involve the rest of the family? How did you get their buy-in for this vision? Or did it matter? As I said at the top, your dad kind of knew where he wanted to go. And once this was sketched out, was he like, “Here’s the law of the land”?

Craig Snider: Well, at first, when I started to develop a framework for a more formal operating foundation, it was just me. I invited my brother Jay in to work with me to craft what, at that time, was the bylaws, because aside from the mission statement, we had to understand how we were going to govern. It wasn’t until the middle of the process that my dad told me that he wanted all the family members to be involved in the foundation. I was a little bit surprised, because of all his children, there was a first batch, me and my three siblings, who were well ahead of his second wife, Martha, and their kids. So there was a generational difference, right? There was maybe some philosophical difference, but in any event, that’s what happened. Everybody did come on.

I think the point that you made earlier about donor intent was so important. Aside from the mission statement that I got help with from the Bradley Foundation, one of the first things I did was attend a Philanthropy Roundtable annual meeting. Adam Meyerson was there, and Adam was terrific. He said, “Well, the first thing you really have to do is memorialize donor intent.” He knew that my dad was at that time in his mid-seventies or so, maybe even late, depending on the timing. He said it wasn’t just about knowing what his donor intent is; you want to write it down.

What we did, and this was really key, was draft a letter with the help of a philanthropic advisor, and it went through some iterations where he could read it and give some input. It was a two- or three-page letter where he writes down his philosophy of grant making, with a lot of different ideas and examples. That letter became the document upon which anyone serving on the foundation agreed to adhere to. It wasn’t about their philanthropic interests. It was about his. We also videotaped him reading it at one of our very first meetings. This was really helpful, as there was some drift after he passed away. People could read it, they could look at it. So I can’t thank Adam Meyerson and the Philanthropy Roundtable enough for what they did. It really helped us along the way.

Peter Lipsett: Yeah, writing it down seems obvious, but it’s not always as obvious as you think it is. If anybody’s listening and needs resources on that, we have some. You can email me, peter@donorstrust.org. We’ll send you our guide on that, because it is so important to think it through and do exactly what you’re saying: write it down, record it. More and more common now, you can get your AI bot to do it, and you can set up a whole AI bot. I’ve seen some prototypes of that. That’s pretty cool. So there are lots of ways to have that interaction.

And one thing I’ve always liked about what you all did, which you mentioned earlier: yes, you had the main donor intent, but once you added all these other people involved with different interests, and you want to inspire philanthropy in them, you actually set up a number of donor-advised fund accounts for that discretionary giving, which I just thought was a novel use of donor-advised funds and a really clever way to keep the foundation focused on philanthropy, even outside of the day-to-day work of the foundation.

Craig Snider: It’s a good point. There were two reasons that we developed the donor-advised funds for discretionary accounts for board members. It was very helpful just from an accounting standpoint. If, let’s say, a board member has a hundred-thousand-dollar discretionary giving program, it was a lot easier to allocate $100,000 into that particular account at the beginning of the budget year. And then as that got drawn down, the individual board member would know where they were at. It wasn’t an accounting problem for somebody else to figure out. As they used it, it dwindled down, so it makes it easy as a practical matter.

The other thing about the discretionary accounts that I want to point out: you mentioned five siblings coming on board, different kinds of personalities, et cetera. The discretionary accounts gave individual board members an opportunity to fund something if it was a small amount, like $5,000. Without that, what happens, depending on what your grant-making model looks like and what the governing model is, is that even the smallest gift to somebody that you want to support in your community has to go through committee, and people can object to it. They could say, “Well, I don’t really think that fits into donor intent.” And it may or it may not. The whole idea is that if it’s something averse to donor intent, it can’t be done. But here’s the thing: discretionary was intended to be sort of a little more flexible. It doesn’t necessarily have to be fulfilling donor intent in terms of, let’s say, American values. It just can’t be averse. You can’t give a gift to Planned Parenthood, that kind of thing. So what it did, and what was so critically important, is that it removed potential power struggles around small gifts that were personal to people, and they could do it because you put a lot of time into this. It’s an unpaid job.

That was another thing for younger kids. He wanted the grandkids involved. At a certain point, none of this really worked right, and we restructured. But you get kids who just got out of college and have had a job for two years, and they don’t have a lot of money and they’re scrapping to get by, and now you ask them to be on a nonprofit foundation that’s run professionally. There’s a lot of stuff that you have to read, meetings you have to go through, decisions and votes that have to be taken. To be honest, it’s kind of unrealistic to think that a kid in their mid-twenties who’s building a career can volunteer all that kind of time. It does seem great on the one hand, but the reality was that before an annual meeting, there was a voluminous binder and a lot had to be read. So anyway, the donor-advised funds, particularly these discretionary accounts, really helped to take pressure off. That way, you’re reducing the conflict.

Peter Lipsett: Yeah. I thought they were a novel thing. We were glad to partner with you on those. And you also got the structures of DonorsTrust so that they couldn’t give to anything too crazy, right?

Craig Snider: That’s right. That’s the other thing: nobody has to do it, because you guys do the due diligence, which is beautiful.

Peter Lipsett: So let’s talk about some of the work that the foundation did. I want to home in on one investment in particular that, in talking to you the other day, sounds like it taught you a lot of lessons on what is possible on the big side and also where things can go awry. That was this major investment that the foundation made in creating the Ed Snider Center for Enterprise and Markets at the University of Maryland, which was your dad’s alma mater. Talk to us about that investment. What was it? It’s a really thriving center, and has been for a long time. And then we can get into what happened to it.

Craig Snider: What’s interesting is that long before the University of Maryland opportunity came along, we had given to Penn a lot, and there was a Snider Entrepreneurial Center at Penn that eventually got subsumed under a lot of different names, because as big gifts came in, the Snider Center was there, but somebody else had sort of taken the identity. The University of Maryland was after him all the time, but he never really gave much to them. At one point he said to me, “When I’m gone, I really want to do something special for the University of Maryland.” I put it in the back of my head.

And as I mentioned, my interest in reforming higher education, or disrupting higher education, or eliminating higher education, wherever we are at now, there was always an understanding that you didn’t want to be just a little island of education that nobody else had access to. We went to the Jack Miller Center, and they happened to be based in Philly. I had met Jack Miller at one of those philanthropy conferences, and I loved what they were doing. So we started to look at developing something for the University of Maryland that we could put my dad’s name on. We made a modest grant to them to begin doing it. They were very thoughtful about it. And then I happened to find out that the Charles Koch Foundation was already well down the road of forming some kind of free enterprise center at Maryland. They had identified a director and all this. So that led to conversations with them. Ultimately, at the end of the day, it became the Ed Snider Center for Enterprise and Markets, free enterprise and markets, at the University of Maryland. They identified a new director. They got it launched.

And when you’re funding something in the academic space, you have to be very careful, because you don’t want to cross the line in terms of demanding that they do anything. It would be a major publicity black eye if Charles Koch and Ed Snider were basically buying their way into the university, right? So the way those contracts are written, on the one hand, the school knows what you’re looking for. On the other hand, the contract can’t be too demanding, if you know what I mean. So what ends up happening is, over time, the money goes in, the programs develop, and you can’t be too hands-on. You’re going to let them do what they’re doing. In that particular case, the person running it, Rajshree Agarwal, was just an outstanding individual with a real, firm understanding of free markets, and she really embraces it. She was also familiar with and in support of the Ayn Rand objectivist approach. There are a lot of different free market writers, but she was a great fit, and we were very excited about that. So Charles Koch and my dad teamed up with their respective foundations, and we made what I think was about a $7 million gift, going over five years, with the idea of establishing tenure-track positions for people who aren’t currently getting tenure-track positions in universities.

Now, the long and short of it is that it didn’t work out the way we had hoped. I don’t know that we have to get into all the details of that. It’s very difficult to really do anything in higher ed, honestly. You’ve got to start your own university, like UATX, that kind of thing.

Peter Lipsett: Yeah, it’s challenging. Our last episode of the podcast was with Robbie George, talking about his center there. As long as he’s at his center, it’s going to be good, but even he admitted, once he’s gone, who knows? He’s trying to make it so it keeps going, but these things are tenuous. These things are really challenging. And I imagine that within a university gift, you’re putting in memorandums of understanding and all kinds of things to try to guide it, right?

Craig Snider: Well, we literally had a contract, and it took a while to get it written properly, but it avoided using any kind of political terms, if you know what I mean. It was just the idea that we were trying to get tenure-track professors in, let’s say, economic history, right? They don’t teach economic history in the university. I mean, I can’t say they don’t teach it, but a lot of the social engineering, gender studies, equity, this and that, has replaced traditional economics and ways of thinking. So yeah, the memoranda of understanding, I think the contract covers it. Everybody knows what to expect. And ultimately, at the end of the day, if they weren’t producing tenure-track professors in these areas, that was the litmus test.

Peter Lipsett: Yeah. Again, it goes back to the donor intent and knowing what you want to get out of a gift, and when you don’t get it, you kind of move on, right? I think that’s good. All right, so let’s turn to you a little bit. You have always struck me, in the years I’ve known you, as somebody who values 501(c)(3) giving but is actually one of the rare donors who really understands 501(c)(4) giving, that more activist-type giving. Talk to us about that, and how that makes you unique, either among the family or in how your dad thought about that stuff, and what you’re trying to accomplish, what you think is possible to accomplish through that mix of (c)(3) and (c)(4) giving.

Craig Snider: Well, I guess for myself, I’ve always been mission driven. In any work that I’ve done, I have to have a love of what it is I’m doing. So when it comes to the culture, very early on we read Atlas Shrugged, and I actually met Ayn Rand in the ’70s, when she had a few years left to live. My dad said to me, “Look, I want you to read this book,” because this book made a huge impact on him. He said, “You don’t have to agree with it, but I want you to read it.” So I read it, and it’s always stayed with me. When you understand what happens when corrupt insiders get their hands on the regulatory apparatus, when the creators and the producers aren’t the ones allowed to produce, and these other guys are… To me, it was very, very, very influential, and I think that having that kind of moral perspective really influenced me. When you listen to Ayn Rand, and she was talking about this in the ’50s, it was as if she could already see it. And by the time we got into the mid-’70s, when I was going to college and whatnot, it was so obvious.

So I think there’s always been a sense that we’ve got to do something beyond running successful businesses and doing what we do. The culture is just going downhill, and the economy and the opportunities for young people. I feel like it’s my obligation, and I think a lot of people feel this way, to do what they can to preserve the freedoms, the individual freedoms, in this country. It really comes down to individual freedom. What Ayn Rand talked about was the state versus the individual, and that’s where we’re at. When Bernie Sanders wants to shut down AI, that’s the state coming in. There are a lot of different aspects to these arguments, right? But the reality is that when the state gets too involved, it usually goes sideways, if not under.

As for the (c)(4) advocacy in politics, my dad was never involved. I brought him to one of the Koch conferences, because the thing was around the 2010 midterms and then the 2012 elections for Senate. I said to my dad, “Look, if you don’t get involved in politics, don’t complain about who’s running the country.” And he said, “Well, they’re all crooks.” I kind of brought him into it. I got involved with some of that (c)(4) activity, particularly around education freedom these days. I don’t think that the universities can be reformed. Incidentally, now they don’t need to be, but we need to accelerate the emancipation of kids out of schools, colleges, grade schools. Technology exists today to pull parents together, to pull classrooms together that are not even permanent bricks and mortar; you can move them around. You can bring people together: there are teachers, there are learners, there are classrooms, there’s transportation. For the first time in history, you don’t need to go to the local school. And you’ve got states passing these ESAs, which just superpower it for people who can’t afford it. A lot of people want to get out of the schools. They don’t want their kids to go, and they don’t know how to do it. I think this is the opportunity right now. I’m actually working on an idea that I’m not looking to start a new business with by any means, but I’m very interested in empowering parents to look up classrooms, teachers, places, and figure out how to superimpose them, so that they know that their sixth grader is going to graduate with all the stuff. It’s called self-directed learning.

So when you ask about (c)(3), (c)(4), and being a bit of an advocate, I can’t sit by and watch it. Sometimes I feel a little helpless, and you never really know. So as we have about ten years left with our foundation, we had a sunset provision and a spend-down, and the nice thing about that is that it gave us more money to spend on average. We’re looking for the best possible ways where the gifts can somehow create leverage to move the culture in a different direction. You never really know, but you try.

Peter Lipsett: Yeah. It’s huge. It’s one of the things, particularly in the education space, that we’ve been thinking a lot about at DonorsTrust as well: how do you leverage this opportunity across the board? And you’re right, the sunset, the spend-down, really allows you to punch above your weight and make a meaningful impact in all of these areas and really carry out your dad’s legacy. I think it’s amazing. It’s an amazing opportunity. And it’s got to be fun too, right?

Craig Snider: Well, it can be. I’ll tell you, the people that we meet, when you get into the philanthropic space and you meet other families that are doing these things, they give their time, their effort, their money. The peer network is really interesting. You meet a lot of people that you wouldn’t normally meet, and there isn’t really any hierarchy. You could be meeting somebody that you could never meet in person if you tried to get a meeting with them, but everybody’s sort of working together, promoting ideas, co-funding certain initiatives. It can be fun.

On the family side, we ran into some problems, just because in governance, everyone was aligned with grant making. Nobody really was trying to give to anything absurd, but the governance of going through committee, with family members sitting on committees and some people holding more power than others, really did create, kind of, the worst possible setup for family conflict. So we restructured. And once we restructured, after my dad died, we made a very bold move and we dissolved the Snider Foundation and made five different foundations. My only regret is that my name is on the foundation, because I’d rather it be his name. I haven’t quite figured that one out yet. But for the simplicity of just getting it done, everybody got a foundation with their name on it, still managing to give according to my dad’s donor intent. It’s a lot more fun now. You know why? Because each of the siblings now gives and interacts through voluntary association, and there’s a real incentive to work together, right? If I’ve got something I’m excited about, I want to get some help from my siblings, and maybe a $250,000 gift that I’m prepared to make can get up to $500,000 if we need it, if they like it. And at the same time, if they have something, they can come to me. So it’s really made it a lot better, and now it’s a lot more fun.

It’s fun when you don’t have the power struggles and the stuff that goes with any organization. You’re sitting on a board with your family members. Most boards are made up of people who have different levels of expertise and different personalities. They’re there for a reason. Now you’re put together with people that you know, and the board doesn’t really have any wiggle room. This is the board, and they’re your siblings. Well, you know there’s going to be conflict on the board. So I have a lot to say. Some families never even consider doing it, but I think that was the biggest mistake my dad made. And then I made the mistake too on the governance model. I didn’t anticipate the kind of problems we could come to. There’s a lot that I learned about family and intergenerational family on a family board that, different topic for a different time, but you can save a lot of heartache in your family by knowing about these stories.

Peter Lipsett: And by breaking it up and doing those smaller foundations, each of those is still embedded with the same donor intent, or overlaid, maybe, with a little bit of the personality of each sibling?

Craig Snider: Well, it was very interesting that you asked that question. I remember when my dad died, Michael Milken was a longtime friend of my dad’s, and we all knew him. When the family did experience some disruption on the board in governance, I talked to him. He said, “You guys really should split that up into five different foundations.” And I said, “Really?” Then I was very concerned about oversight and compliance and enforcement of donor intent. He said, “You can’t do it.” And that was a stumbling block for a while.

At the end of the day, here’s what it boils down to. Legally, there’s no enforcement mechanism. Everybody’s got their own foundation, so it’s really just a loyalty to my dad and to what he had wanted, and an understanding of what the boundaries are. When he died, he had six kids. There were certain situations where it didn’t seem like there was any possible way that some people could have their own foundation, because they were so far removed from my dad’s philosophy and they would never sign that thing. So what it really boils down to right now is that everybody has agreed to use good faith, not to look over everybody’s shoulder to see what they’re giving to. We have philanthropic advisors who used to be our staff, who set up their own independent practice and got contracts with each of us. If all their money were being placed in DonorsTrust, and it could be, that would be the very best, by the way. It wouldn’t have been a bad way to do it, and I’m sorry to say it now, because that would have been a nice contract to have. But I think they do a pretty good job self-regulating, and I think all of my siblings really care. So what it is, is a self-enforced adherence to donor intent. Whereas in the past, it was the staff that would do it.

If you really have good, solid donor intent and you have family working in the foundation and there’s a governance model, I know a lot about these things. Here’s what it boils down to. When we split it up, I said that my father, of all the things he gave to, of all of his donor intent, wanted the foundation to be a place that promoted family togetherness and family enrichment. And when it became obvious that, for whatever reason, this family wasn’t going to be able to do that, and in fact it was destroying the family in a way, that was my argument, and it helped, because he would never have wanted to see that. And I know that if he had been alive, he would have said, “You know what, we made a little mistake. Let’s do this a little differently.” I know it. Because the last thing he would have wanted was that. So we’re really happy with it.

If there are any families out there who are either just at the beginning of the journey of trying to start a foundation or in the middle, I do think these kinds of stories are helpful, particularly for founders. Founders are so visionary and so strong. When they’re alive, everything’s fine, because if the wheels are spinning off the bus, they’re going to come in and fix it. If that means kicking somebody off the board or restructuring, they’re going to do it. But when they’re not around is when the glue kind of comes off, because these founders are such centralizing, magnetic forces in the family. Like you mentioned, my dad was bigger than life. And we loved him. It was just our dad. We loved the Flyers and we loved what he did. There’s this gravitational force around a very powerful family figure, and when that person is gone, the whole operating system breaks down.

Peter Lipsett: Well, this has been great to hear all these stories, and I think there are a lot of lessons for other people listening and other founders, because we often get the nice, easy story of, “We set up this foundation and we wrote the plan and we’ve just followed it and it’s all been great and good.” And it can get sticky in there, and it can get challenging, and sometimes you have to pivot, which I think is a wonderful part of your story. So, Craig Snider, I really appreciate you sharing this, telling us about your dad and your family and the great investments you’ve made to make America stronger.

Craig Snider: Thanks, Peter. It’s been a pleasure being with you, and it’s a pleasure to be reconnected. It’s great to see you doing what you’re doing, and thanks for having me on. I really enjoyed speaking with you.

Peter Lipsett: There’s an old joke in the foundation world that if you know one foundation, you know one foundation, because they’re all different. They all have their own way of operating. And why shouldn’t they? Every donor has his or her or their family’s own idea of what needs to change in the world, how to go about it, what the right way to do it is, what types of organizations they want to support, and which are the ones they don’t want to support. And that’s great. That type of spontaneous order of giving is what allows our charitable sector to be so thriving and different and unique, and to attack these problems from so many different angles. We should celebrate that. And I think Craig’s story of the Snider family and Ed Snider’s legacy helps illustrate what can happen when a donor really thinks hard about what they want to do, gives some structure to it, uses multiple vehicles, even with foundations and donor-advised funds, (c)(4) giving, etc., but understands that they want to change the world and they’re willing to go and do it. It’s wonderful to hear Craig’s story, and wonderful to remember the legacy that Ed Snider and his whole family have had advancing important issues. It’s great.

You probably have your own set of issues, and if you’re trying to figure out how to codify that, how to really get that donor intent written in the right way, you could thumb through some past episodes of the Giving Ventures podcast where we’ve addressed that issue. But email me, peter at donorstrust.org. I’ll send you our donor’s guide to securing your charitable intent, a short little guide that walks you through eight steps for figuring out how to do it, how to lock down that donor intent that is so important to have codified and written down. I love that Craig talked about the importance of just writing it down and learning that, which again seems so obvious, but really is a critical step in all of this.

Whether you’re looking for just that simple guide, or broader philanthropic advising, or maybe just need a donor-advised fund that understands your values and aligns with them, that is what DonorsTrust is here for. That is what we do. We work with donors who care about limited government, personal responsibility, and free enterprise. You probably wouldn’t be listening to this podcast if that wasn’t you. So if we’re not already working with you, please reach out. Go to donorstrust.org, email me, and we would love to have a conversation to see if we can be helpful. And if we are working with you, thank you. We’re delighted to do so. We’re delighted to be part of your donor intent story. We’ll be back in a couple weeks with another great episode. Until then, thank you for being a giver. We’ll talk more soon.

Navigating Family Dynamics While Protecting Donor Intent

The legendary businessman and philanthropist Ed Snider was a titan of Philadelphia sports. He was inducted in the Hockey Hall of Fame, owned Philadelphia’s NBA team, the 76ers, and even ran the Philadelphia Eagles NFL team back in the 1960s. But Ed’s philanthropic legacy is just as illustrious. He helped found the Ayn Rand Institute, created the Ed Snider Center for Enterprise and Markets at his alma mater the University of Maryland, and established a charitable family foundation to involve his six children in his philanthropic endeavors.

Ed’s son Craig joins Peter on this episode of Giving Ventures to discuss his father’s giving, the importance of donor intent, and the complexities that come with charitable giving in a large family. Craig served as executive director of the Snider Family Foundation.

Note: This transcript was generated and cleaned by AI.

Peter Lipsett: I only had a few interactions with the great philanthropist and business leader Ed Snider, and my impression from those few interactions was that this was a guy who was tough. He knew what he wanted. He had big, bold visions about things, and he went after them. And that energy, that vision, is what helped him get the hockey expansion team, the Flyers, into Philadelphia in the 1960s, to buy the basketball team, the 76ers, out of bankruptcy and build that franchise back up, but also to lead companies in the music industry, to become a titan of sports ownership, but also sports facilities and sports media. Maybe most famously of all, he was also exceptionally generous. He loved this country with a passion, and that is a legacy that we always want to continue. But how do you protect that legacy? How do you make sure the donor intent is in place for a generous business leader and donor like that in their lifetime? And then after they pass away, as Ed Snider has. That was a job that fell to Ed’s kids, and we are happy to have one of those kids with us today to talk about these thorny problems.

Craig Snider became the founding executive director of the Snider Family Foundation when it was being formed and worked hard with his dad to craft the donor intent and the purpose of that foundation. Outside of the philanthropic work, Craig is also just an impressive guy in his own right, who has had careers in executive leadership, marketing innovation, the entertainment industry, some entrepreneurship, the sports industry, all kinds of neat stuff. And today, with Craig, we are going to explore how you define a family’s donor intent and then how you carry it out with a large family, the experiments that worked, the ones that didn’t work, and how he continues to carry on his dad’s legacy and build his own as we go. Craig, it’s great to see you.

Craig Snider: Thank you, Peter. Nice to be on. I appreciate the opportunity to share with you today.

Peter Lipsett: Your dad was a real builder, a true entrepreneur. Just curious, having grown up with him, grown up around these sports franchises and all this neat stuff, what were the big lessons you took away from him?

Craig Snider: Well, my dad really was a pretty simple guy. I think that might be true of a lot of very successful entrepreneurs. They don’t have ambition that extends in every direction for all time. They start out in one place and do what they’re doing, and then once they’ve mastered that, they build on it. He was classically that kind of entrepreneur. He grew up in a family of recent immigrants. My grandfather was a first-generation American. My great-grandfather was born in Russia. So we came as a part of the great Jewish migration to the United States when the pogroms in Russia were taking place and Jews had to get out.

It’s kind of interesting, because my great-grandfather was a peddler. He sold fruit from a pushcart, and then the next generation had corner stores, and later in their lives those corner stores consolidated and became analogous to what we might think of today as a typical grocery store or supermarket. So it was that progression. You see it today with a lot of immigrants, where the Koreans come in and start selling fruit on the street corner, and they get it. So it was like that. My dad grew up in that environment. He worked in the grocery store, and he took great pride in how he stacked the vegetables and the fruits. He felt like he had the best fruit department in Washington, DC. And then he started selling Christmas trees at Christmas and flowers for the different holidays. Oftentimes they would do that. His first venture was that he found he could sell records, the 45s back in the day. His first real business that he started was a record business. He started selling them in the grocery stores, in those racks. You walk into a drugstore and you see the rack of greeting cards; that’s a rack supplied by an outside supplier. They take care of it. Well, he did the same thing with records, and that’s how he got his start.

But a very simple guy. And every time he expanded into a business, he was always expanding laterally, or somewhere connected to the business he was in, like when he got into the sports stuff. I guess my lesson from him was just be good at what you’re doing, whatever you’re doing, and that money wasn’t necessarily the goal. The goal was to be really good at something and to really love what you were doing. And money was the reward because you did it well.

Peter Lipsett: I just finished reading Jim Collins’s new book about, essentially, how to live a good life. One of the things he points to, as he goes through all these different stories, is that all of these famous people, these people who’ve done huge, amazing things, all inverted the money arrow. Many of them ended up being very wealthy and, certainly, economically stable, but money was never the driver. It was that fire inside of them. They found the thing that really got them going. And that’s what you’re saying: he knew what got him going, and he knew what he was good at, and he pursued it to the very end, which I think is just incredible. So how did that…

Craig Snider: Yeah, it’s like a passion for excellence.

Peter Lipsett: Yeah, that passion for excellence. How did that manifest in philanthropy? Was philanthropy a piece of his life throughout, or was it one of those things that came about later in life?

Craig Snider: Well, he’s always been very generous. You hear these stories about Donald Trump, how he’d hear about somebody who was on hard times and he would help them out. My dad helped out the people around him, his family, friends. And he had a foundation or a nonprofit for a long time before I helped him to structure it and really organize it for the future, back around 2010. I did that in that time frame. He would probably tell you that before that, his philanthropy was very undisciplined. If somebody came to him and pitched him and cornered him, sometimes he would just give because he thought it was a good idea and he liked the people, but there was no structure behind the due diligence. He probably made a few gifts that he wished he hadn’t.

That being said, once we organized for him back in 2010, ’11, ’12, he was really funny, because everyone had a discretionary account when the board finally came on. They had a certain amount of money that they could allocate on their own, as long as it wasn’t averse to donor intent, as long as it wasn’t restricted. And he had a certain amount more than everybody else, but he would call me from time to time and say, “Craig, how much money do I have in my account?” And he loved the idea that there was this organizational discipline put on it, and on him.

I just found that so incredible. Once he set up the organization, he didn’t say to himself, “Well, I’m going to give whatever I want to. It doesn’t really matter.” He didn’t. He could have spent whatever he wanted on whoever he wanted, and he had the authority. He had veto power while he was alive to veto anything that he didn’t like, even if it came up through committee. But once we had the structure in place, he took it seriously, even to the point of his own discretionary budget. He would call me and say, “Where am I at? Do I have enough to do something here?” So he had a lot of respect for the organization, not just our foundation, but you see this throughout his career. He hired good people. He delegated to them, and he let them run the business. Now, I would say I didn’t work with the Flyers, and I didn’t see some of the big controversies and trades that happened with management and players over the years. That was really his baby. But generally speaking, corporately and with the foundation, he would let the staff and the family do what they were doing.

We developed, I think, a very professional governance model and grant-making model very quickly. I was actually shocked that we were a little bit further ahead than many well-established and much bigger foundations than us, because until my dad died, the foundation didn’t really have a corpus. We would fund it on an annual budgetary basis. But he was very proud of that.

Peter Lipsett: So let’s go back to the beginning of that structure and building those structures. You were there, helping him put these structures in place, and it sounds like he was amenable to it. Not all philanthropists are seeking that structure; they feel constrained by it. But it sounds like he accepted it. Take us inside some of those early discussions, not just of the structure, but how you define what the donor intent is, the purpose of the whole foundation.

Craig Snider: Well, that’s interesting, because there was no real structure before I came and he asked me to do it. I had to look back through years of gifts that he had given. You have to keep in mind that all that really was was one of his top guys coming to him with letters, unsolicited, from the Boys Club of America and this place and that place. The thousand dollars that he gave was kind of a no. But I went back through it and looked at it, and I probably had to get 990s and just go back through it. What I determined was that there were three major areas that he gave to. One was community: the hospitals, the cancer research, whatever. There was American values, like the David Horowitz Freedom Center. My dad was an early supporter of the Middle East Forum, these kinds of places that were safeguarding America’s security and culture, fighting for it. And then the third was Jewish culture and survival. He didn’t really believe in funding Israel directly. He felt that Israel could take care of itself, that they had developed enough and they had enough. And I tend to agree with that. However, in emergencies, we would be there. Like when the Second Intifada happened and there were all of these attacks, their emergency services needed ambulances and such, and he bought an ambulance. That was something that I saw.

Once we figured out what areas he had been spending in, I had a framework. But by far the biggest area would have been American values and free enterprise. To me, that was really what he cared about. At the time, I had become aware of the Bradley Foundation, and I was very interested, obsessed really, with the whole idea of how the American educational system had been completely penetrated and overtaken by the left. We were looking at ways to help the situation in higher education. I went to Bradley and learned about what they were doing, but I also had a chance to look at their mission statement. They publish an annual report every year, and they were very clear about what they’re giving to and why they’re giving. They always seemed to be one step ahead of the pack in terms of anticipating how we could leverage higher ed. After looking at their mission statement, I felt very confident that we could draft something for our foundation that borrowed a little bit of their terminology and some of their ideas, and that’s what we did.

Peter Lipsett: So you had that sketched out. You had that on paper. You also have five other brothers and sisters, is that right? So it’s a big family. How did you involve the rest of the family? How did you get their buy-in for this vision? Or did it matter? As I said at the top, your dad kind of knew where he wanted to go. And once this was sketched out, was he like, “Here’s the law of the land”?

Craig Snider: Well, at first, when I started to develop a framework for a more formal operating foundation, it was just me. I invited my brother Jay in to work with me to craft what, at that time, was the bylaws, because aside from the mission statement, we had to understand how we were going to govern. It wasn’t until the middle of the process that my dad told me that he wanted all the family members to be involved in the foundation. I was a little bit surprised, because of all his children, there was a first batch, me and my three siblings, who were well ahead of his second wife, Martha, and their kids. So there was a generational difference, right? There was maybe some philosophical difference, but in any event, that’s what happened. Everybody did come on.

I think the point that you made earlier about donor intent was so important. Aside from the mission statement that I got help with from the Bradley Foundation, one of the first things I did was attend a Philanthropy Roundtable annual meeting. Adam Meyerson was there, and Adam was terrific. He said, “Well, the first thing you really have to do is memorialize donor intent.” He knew that my dad was at that time in his mid-seventies or so, maybe even late, depending on the timing. He said it wasn’t just about knowing what his donor intent is; you want to write it down.

What we did, and this was really key, was draft a letter with the help of a philanthropic advisor, and it went through some iterations where he could read it and give some input. It was a two- or three-page letter where he writes down his philosophy of grant making, with a lot of different ideas and examples. That letter became the document upon which anyone serving on the foundation agreed to adhere to. It wasn’t about their philanthropic interests. It was about his. We also videotaped him reading it at one of our very first meetings. This was really helpful, as there was some drift after he passed away. People could read it, they could look at it. So I can’t thank Adam Meyerson and the Philanthropy Roundtable enough for what they did. It really helped us along the way.

Peter Lipsett: Yeah, writing it down seems obvious, but it’s not always as obvious as you think it is. If anybody’s listening and needs resources on that, we have some. You can email me, peter@donorstrust.org. We’ll send you our guide on that, because it is so important to think it through and do exactly what you’re saying: write it down, record it. More and more common now, you can get your AI bot to do it, and you can set up a whole AI bot. I’ve seen some prototypes of that. That’s pretty cool. So there are lots of ways to have that interaction.

And one thing I’ve always liked about what you all did, which you mentioned earlier: yes, you had the main donor intent, but once you added all these other people involved with different interests, and you want to inspire philanthropy in them, you actually set up a number of donor-advised fund accounts for that discretionary giving, which I just thought was a novel use of donor-advised funds and a really clever way to keep the foundation focused on philanthropy, even outside of the day-to-day work of the foundation.

Craig Snider: It’s a good point. There were two reasons that we developed the donor-advised funds for discretionary accounts for board members. It was very helpful just from an accounting standpoint. If, let’s say, a board member has a hundred-thousand-dollar discretionary giving program, it was a lot easier to allocate $100,000 into that particular account at the beginning of the budget year. And then as that got drawn down, the individual board member would know where they were at. It wasn’t an accounting problem for somebody else to figure out. As they used it, it dwindled down, so it makes it easy as a practical matter.

The other thing about the discretionary accounts that I want to point out: you mentioned five siblings coming on board, different kinds of personalities, et cetera. The discretionary accounts gave individual board members an opportunity to fund something if it was a small amount, like $5,000. Without that, what happens, depending on what your grant-making model looks like and what the governing model is, is that even the smallest gift to somebody that you want to support in your community has to go through committee, and people can object to it. They could say, “Well, I don’t really think that fits into donor intent.” And it may or it may not. The whole idea is that if it’s something averse to donor intent, it can’t be done. But here’s the thing: discretionary was intended to be sort of a little more flexible. It doesn’t necessarily have to be fulfilling donor intent in terms of, let’s say, American values. It just can’t be averse. You can’t give a gift to Planned Parenthood, that kind of thing. So what it did, and what was so critically important, is that it removed potential power struggles around small gifts that were personal to people, and they could do it because you put a lot of time into this. It’s an unpaid job.

That was another thing for younger kids. He wanted the grandkids involved. At a certain point, none of this really worked right, and we restructured. But you get kids who just got out of college and have had a job for two years, and they don’t have a lot of money and they’re scrapping to get by, and now you ask them to be on a nonprofit foundation that’s run professionally. There’s a lot of stuff that you have to read, meetings you have to go through, decisions and votes that have to be taken. To be honest, it’s kind of unrealistic to think that a kid in their mid-twenties who’s building a career can volunteer all that kind of time. It does seem great on the one hand, but the reality was that before an annual meeting, there was a voluminous binder and a lot had to be read. So anyway, the donor-advised funds, particularly these discretionary accounts, really helped to take pressure off. That way, you’re reducing the conflict.

Peter Lipsett: Yeah. I thought they were a novel thing. We were glad to partner with you on those. And you also got the structures of DonorsTrust so that they couldn’t give to anything too crazy, right?

Craig Snider: That’s right. That’s the other thing: nobody has to do it, because you guys do the due diligence, which is beautiful.

Peter Lipsett: So let’s talk about some of the work that the foundation did. I want to home in on one investment in particular that, in talking to you the other day, sounds like it taught you a lot of lessons on what is possible on the big side and also where things can go awry. That was this major investment that the foundation made in creating the Ed Snider Center for Enterprise and Markets at the University of Maryland, which was your dad’s alma mater. Talk to us about that investment. What was it? It’s a really thriving center, and has been for a long time. And then we can get into what happened to it.

Craig Snider: What’s interesting is that long before the University of Maryland opportunity came along, we had given to Penn a lot, and there was a Snider Entrepreneurial Center at Penn that eventually got subsumed under a lot of different names, because as big gifts came in, the Snider Center was there, but somebody else had sort of taken the identity. The University of Maryland was after him all the time, but he never really gave much to them. At one point he said to me, “When I’m gone, I really want to do something special for the University of Maryland.” I put it in the back of my head.

And as I mentioned, my interest in reforming higher education, or disrupting higher education, or eliminating higher education, wherever we are at now, there was always an understanding that you didn’t want to be just a little island of education that nobody else had access to. We went to the Jack Miller Center, and they happened to be based in Philly. I had met Jack Miller at one of those philanthropy conferences, and I loved what they were doing. So we started to look at developing something for the University of Maryland that we could put my dad’s name on. We made a modest grant to them to begin doing it. They were very thoughtful about it. And then I happened to find out that the Charles Koch Foundation was already well down the road of forming some kind of free enterprise center at Maryland. They had identified a director and all this. So that led to conversations with them. Ultimately, at the end of the day, it became the Ed Snider Center for Enterprise and Markets, free enterprise and markets, at the University of Maryland. They identified a new director. They got it launched.

And when you’re funding something in the academic space, you have to be very careful, because you don’t want to cross the line in terms of demanding that they do anything. It would be a major publicity black eye if Charles Koch and Ed Snider were basically buying their way into the university, right? So the way those contracts are written, on the one hand, the school knows what you’re looking for. On the other hand, the contract can’t be too demanding, if you know what I mean. So what ends up happening is, over time, the money goes in, the programs develop, and you can’t be too hands-on. You’re going to let them do what they’re doing. In that particular case, the person running it, Rajshree Agarwal, was just an outstanding individual with a real, firm understanding of free markets, and she really embraces it. She was also familiar with and in support of the Ayn Rand objectivist approach. There are a lot of different free market writers, but she was a great fit, and we were very excited about that. So Charles Koch and my dad teamed up with their respective foundations, and we made what I think was about a $7 million gift, going over five years, with the idea of establishing tenure-track positions for people who aren’t currently getting tenure-track positions in universities.

Now, the long and short of it is that it didn’t work out the way we had hoped. I don’t know that we have to get into all the details of that. It’s very difficult to really do anything in higher ed, honestly. You’ve got to start your own university, like UATX, that kind of thing.

Peter Lipsett: Yeah, it’s challenging. Our last episode of the podcast was with Robbie George, talking about his center there. As long as he’s at his center, it’s going to be good, but even he admitted, once he’s gone, who knows? He’s trying to make it so it keeps going, but these things are tenuous. These things are really challenging. And I imagine that within a university gift, you’re putting in memorandums of understanding and all kinds of things to try to guide it, right?

Craig Snider: Well, we literally had a contract, and it took a while to get it written properly, but it avoided using any kind of political terms, if you know what I mean. It was just the idea that we were trying to get tenure-track professors in, let’s say, economic history, right? They don’t teach economic history in the university. I mean, I can’t say they don’t teach it, but a lot of the social engineering, gender studies, equity, this and that, has replaced traditional economics and ways of thinking. So yeah, the memoranda of understanding, I think the contract covers it. Everybody knows what to expect. And ultimately, at the end of the day, if they weren’t producing tenure-track professors in these areas, that was the litmus test.

Peter Lipsett: Yeah. Again, it goes back to the donor intent and knowing what you want to get out of a gift, and when you don’t get it, you kind of move on, right? I think that’s good. All right, so let’s turn to you a little bit. You have always struck me, in the years I’ve known you, as somebody who values 501(c)(3) giving but is actually one of the rare donors who really understands 501(c)(4) giving, that more activist-type giving. Talk to us about that, and how that makes you unique, either among the family or in how your dad thought about that stuff, and what you’re trying to accomplish, what you think is possible to accomplish through that mix of (c)(3) and (c)(4) giving.

Craig Snider: Well, I guess for myself, I’ve always been mission driven. In any work that I’ve done, I have to have a love of what it is I’m doing. So when it comes to the culture, very early on we read Atlas Shrugged, and I actually met Ayn Rand in the ’70s, when she had a few years left to live. My dad said to me, “Look, I want you to read this book,” because this book made a huge impact on him. He said, “You don’t have to agree with it, but I want you to read it.” So I read it, and it’s always stayed with me. When you understand what happens when corrupt insiders get their hands on the regulatory apparatus, when the creators and the producers aren’t the ones allowed to produce, and these other guys are… To me, it was very, very, very influential, and I think that having that kind of moral perspective really influenced me. When you listen to Ayn Rand, and she was talking about this in the ’50s, it was as if she could already see it. And by the time we got into the mid-’70s, when I was going to college and whatnot, it was so obvious.

So I think there’s always been a sense that we’ve got to do something beyond running successful businesses and doing what we do. The culture is just going downhill, and the economy and the opportunities for young people. I feel like it’s my obligation, and I think a lot of people feel this way, to do what they can to preserve the freedoms, the individual freedoms, in this country. It really comes down to individual freedom. What Ayn Rand talked about was the state versus the individual, and that’s where we’re at. When Bernie Sanders wants to shut down AI, that’s the state coming in. There are a lot of different aspects to these arguments, right? But the reality is that when the state gets too involved, it usually goes sideways, if not under.

As for the (c)(4) advocacy in politics, my dad was never involved. I brought him to one of the Koch conferences, because the thing was around the 2010 midterms and then the 2012 elections for Senate. I said to my dad, “Look, if you don’t get involved in politics, don’t complain about who’s running the country.” And he said, “Well, they’re all crooks.” I kind of brought him into it. I got involved with some of that (c)(4) activity, particularly around education freedom these days. I don’t think that the universities can be reformed. Incidentally, now they don’t need to be, but we need to accelerate the emancipation of kids out of schools, colleges, grade schools. Technology exists today to pull parents together, to pull classrooms together that are not even permanent bricks and mortar; you can move them around. You can bring people together: there are teachers, there are learners, there are classrooms, there’s transportation. For the first time in history, you don’t need to go to the local school. And you’ve got states passing these ESAs, which just superpower it for people who can’t afford it. A lot of people want to get out of the schools. They don’t want their kids to go, and they don’t know how to do it. I think this is the opportunity right now. I’m actually working on an idea that I’m not looking to start a new business with by any means, but I’m very interested in empowering parents to look up classrooms, teachers, places, and figure out how to superimpose them, so that they know that their sixth grader is going to graduate with all the stuff. It’s called self-directed learning.

So when you ask about (c)(3), (c)(4), and being a bit of an advocate, I can’t sit by and watch it. Sometimes I feel a little helpless, and you never really know. So as we have about ten years left with our foundation, we had a sunset provision and a spend-down, and the nice thing about that is that it gave us more money to spend on average. We’re looking for the best possible ways where the gifts can somehow create leverage to move the culture in a different direction. You never really know, but you try.

Peter Lipsett: Yeah. It’s huge. It’s one of the things, particularly in the education space, that we’ve been thinking a lot about at DonorsTrust as well: how do you leverage this opportunity across the board? And you’re right, the sunset, the spend-down, really allows you to punch above your weight and make a meaningful impact in all of these areas and really carry out your dad’s legacy. I think it’s amazing. It’s an amazing opportunity. And it’s got to be fun too, right?

Craig Snider: Well, it can be. I’ll tell you, the people that we meet, when you get into the philanthropic space and you meet other families that are doing these things, they give their time, their effort, their money. The peer network is really interesting. You meet a lot of people that you wouldn’t normally meet, and there isn’t really any hierarchy. You could be meeting somebody that you could never meet in person if you tried to get a meeting with them, but everybody’s sort of working together, promoting ideas, co-funding certain initiatives. It can be fun.

On the family side, we ran into some problems, just because in governance, everyone was aligned with grant making. Nobody really was trying to give to anything absurd, but the governance of going through committee, with family members sitting on committees and some people holding more power than others, really did create, kind of, the worst possible setup for family conflict. So we restructured. And once we restructured, after my dad died, we made a very bold move and we dissolved the Snider Foundation and made five different foundations. My only regret is that my name is on the foundation, because I’d rather it be his name. I haven’t quite figured that one out yet. But for the simplicity of just getting it done, everybody got a foundation with their name on it, still managing to give according to my dad’s donor intent. It’s a lot more fun now. You know why? Because each of the siblings now gives and interacts through voluntary association, and there’s a real incentive to work together, right? If I’ve got something I’m excited about, I want to get some help from my siblings, and maybe a $250,000 gift that I’m prepared to make can get up to $500,000 if we need it, if they like it. And at the same time, if they have something, they can come to me. So it’s really made it a lot better, and now it’s a lot more fun.

It’s fun when you don’t have the power struggles and the stuff that goes with any organization. You’re sitting on a board with your family members. Most boards are made up of people who have different levels of expertise and different personalities. They’re there for a reason. Now you’re put together with people that you know, and the board doesn’t really have any wiggle room. This is the board, and they’re your siblings. Well, you know there’s going to be conflict on the board. So I have a lot to say. Some families never even consider doing it, but I think that was the biggest mistake my dad made. And then I made the mistake too on the governance model. I didn’t anticipate the kind of problems we could come to. There’s a lot that I learned about family and intergenerational family on a family board that, different topic for a different time, but you can save a lot of heartache in your family by knowing about these stories.

Peter Lipsett: And by breaking it up and doing those smaller foundations, each of those is still embedded with the same donor intent, or overlaid, maybe, with a little bit of the personality of each sibling?

Craig Snider: Well, it was very interesting that you asked that question. I remember when my dad died, Michael Milken was a longtime friend of my dad’s, and we all knew him. When the family did experience some disruption on the board in governance, I talked to him. He said, “You guys really should split that up into five different foundations.” And I said, “Really?” Then I was very concerned about oversight and compliance and enforcement of donor intent. He said, “You can’t do it.” And that was a stumbling block for a while.

At the end of the day, here’s what it boils down to. Legally, there’s no enforcement mechanism. Everybody’s got their own foundation, so it’s really just a loyalty to my dad and to what he had wanted, and an understanding of what the boundaries are. When he died, he had six kids. There were certain situations where it didn’t seem like there was any possible way that some people could have their own foundation, because they were so far removed from my dad’s philosophy and they would never sign that thing. So what it really boils down to right now is that everybody has agreed to use good faith, not to look over everybody’s shoulder to see what they’re giving to. We have philanthropic advisors who used to be our staff, who set up their own independent practice and got contracts with each of us. If all their money were being placed in DonorsTrust, and it could be, that would be the very best, by the way. It wouldn’t have been a bad way to do it, and I’m sorry to say it now, because that would have been a nice contract to have. But I think they do a pretty good job self-regulating, and I think all of my siblings really care. So what it is, is a self-enforced adherence to donor intent. Whereas in the past, it was the staff that would do it.

If you really have good, solid donor intent and you have family working in the foundation and there’s a governance model, I know a lot about these things. Here’s what it boils down to. When we split it up, I said that my father, of all the things he gave to, of all of his donor intent, wanted the foundation to be a place that promoted family togetherness and family enrichment. And when it became obvious that, for whatever reason, this family wasn’t going to be able to do that, and in fact it was destroying the family in a way, that was my argument, and it helped, because he would never have wanted to see that. And I know that if he had been alive, he would have said, “You know what, we made a little mistake. Let’s do this a little differently.” I know it. Because the last thing he would have wanted was that. So we’re really happy with it.

If there are any families out there who are either just at the beginning of the journey of trying to start a foundation or in the middle, I do think these kinds of stories are helpful, particularly for founders. Founders are so visionary and so strong. When they’re alive, everything’s fine, because if the wheels are spinning off the bus, they’re going to come in and fix it. If that means kicking somebody off the board or restructuring, they’re going to do it. But when they’re not around is when the glue kind of comes off, because these founders are such centralizing, magnetic forces in the family. Like you mentioned, my dad was bigger than life. And we loved him. It was just our dad. We loved the Flyers and we loved what he did. There’s this gravitational force around a very powerful family figure, and when that person is gone, the whole operating system breaks down.

Peter Lipsett: Well, this has been great to hear all these stories, and I think there are a lot of lessons for other people listening and other founders, because we often get the nice, easy story of, “We set up this foundation and we wrote the plan and we’ve just followed it and it’s all been great and good.” And it can get sticky in there, and it can get challenging, and sometimes you have to pivot, which I think is a wonderful part of your story. So, Craig Snider, I really appreciate you sharing this, telling us about your dad and your family and the great investments you’ve made to make America stronger.

Craig Snider: Thanks, Peter. It’s been a pleasure being with you, and it’s a pleasure to be reconnected. It’s great to see you doing what you’re doing, and thanks for having me on. I really enjoyed speaking with you.

Peter Lipsett: There’s an old joke in the foundation world that if you know one foundation, you know one foundation, because they’re all different. They all have their own way of operating. And why shouldn’t they? Every donor has his or her or their family’s own idea of what needs to change in the world, how to go about it, what the right way to do it is, what types of organizations they want to support, and which are the ones they don’t want to support. And that’s great. That type of spontaneous order of giving is what allows our charitable sector to be so thriving and different and unique, and to attack these problems from so many different angles. We should celebrate that. And I think Craig’s story of the Snider family and Ed Snider’s legacy helps illustrate what can happen when a donor really thinks hard about what they want to do, gives some structure to it, uses multiple vehicles, even with foundations and donor-advised funds, (c)(4) giving, etc., but understands that they want to change the world and they’re willing to go and do it. It’s wonderful to hear Craig’s story, and wonderful to remember the legacy that Ed Snider and his whole family have had advancing important issues. It’s great.

You probably have your own set of issues, and if you’re trying to figure out how to codify that, how to really get that donor intent written in the right way, you could thumb through some past episodes of the Giving Ventures podcast where we’ve addressed that issue. But email me, peter at donorstrust.org. I’ll send you our donor’s guide to securing your charitable intent, a short little guide that walks you through eight steps for figuring out how to do it, how to lock down that donor intent that is so important to have codified and written down. I love that Craig talked about the importance of just writing it down and learning that, which again seems so obvious, but really is a critical step in all of this.

Whether you’re looking for just that simple guide, or broader philanthropic advising, or maybe just need a donor-advised fund that understands your values and aligns with them, that is what DonorsTrust is here for. That is what we do. We work with donors who care about limited government, personal responsibility, and free enterprise. You probably wouldn’t be listening to this podcast if that wasn’t you. So if we’re not already working with you, please reach out. Go to donorstrust.org, email me, and we would love to have a conversation to see if we can be helpful. And if we are working with you, thank you. We’re delighted to do so. We’re delighted to be part of your donor intent story. We’ll be back in a couple weeks with another great episode. Until then, thank you for being a giver. We’ll talk more soon.

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